STR by the room or whole upstairs area in a single family residence

[Aubri Paredes]

Hi everyone, I am a new investor in the area. I currently own a 2 family that I closed on last year as a house hack. I am looking to do my next house hack. 

I want to expand my search and potentially look into single family properties as a house hack. I have been looking at 2 level single family homes. My plan would be to rent the whole 1st floor or 2nd floor (depending on house layout) exclusively as STRs. After reading some occupancy laws in the area, it seems if it falls within the STR guidelines in that township, that would be okay.

Has anyone had any experience in doing this? Renting out a whole floor in a single family residence as STR? And if I wanted to put up a drywall to separate the spaces but both spaces still have two means of egress - where can I see if that is okay in that township? Trying to see what my limits are with a single family residence and separating for privacy reasons.

[Earl White]

Quote from @Aubri Paredes:

Has anyone had any experience in doing this? Renting out a whole floor in a single family residence as STR? And if I wanted to put up a drywall to separate the spaces but both spaces still have two means of egress - where can I see if that is okay in that township? Trying to see what my limits are with a single family residence and separating for privacy reasons.

If you want to make sure you are not going to run into any problems, you need to contact the local building/construction/zoning department of the city (however they have set it up) to find out the requirements. Be careful with being "fast and loose" with city requirements because if you for some reason end up needing to evict a tenant, and you did not comply with city requirements, tenant can argue your non-compliance in court which would be uncomfortable to deal with and also make a complaint to the city (once tenant has a problem, they in my experience go all out citing every legal compliance problem).